Comment: Too little carrot, too much stick?

This nation will, over coming years, see the biggest reform of the welfare system since the 1940s. The need for reform is undeniable. With 30 or more work-related benefits, the system is much too complex. The poverty trap is a very real problem: those on benefits who try to work may be no better, perhaps even worse off. That cannot be right.

This nation will, over coming years, see the biggest reform of the welfare system since the 1940s.

The need for reform is undeniable. With 30 or more work-related benefits, the system is much too complex. The poverty trap is a very real problem: those on benefits who try to work may be no better, perhaps even worse off. That cannot be right.

The idea of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith to simplify all those work-related benefits into a Universal Credit is plain common sense.

His promise that no one will receive less benefit as a result of that consolidation is a welcome one, as is the idea that people will keep 35p in the pound of what they earn on top of their benefit, thus allowing people to ease their way back into employment in a way that is not possible now.

There are, though, huge concerns about the sanctions driving these changes. Jobless people will lose benefits for three months if they turn down work.

Three such refusals and they can lose their jobseekers’ allowance for three years. This seems like a return to the principles of the Victorian workhouse, when the poor were blamed for their predicament.

There is too little of the carrot in Mr Duncan Smith’s grand plan, and too much of the stick. The effects on children living in households punished as a result of these reforms may be intolerable.

Disability rights campaigners fear that efforts to deem more disabled people capable of work could push those people into poverty.

There is also a huge practical misgiving about the timing of this welfare shake-up. Unlike such reforms in the past, it comes when the economy is fragile, and the nation is bracing itself for massive public sector cuts and consequent job losses.

It is all very well telling benefit claimants they must work, but will the jobs be there? And, even if the jobs exist, will those candidates being forced off benefits be fit to do them?

There will always be those unable to work. The danger is that we now attach fresh stigma to those people. Add to this the volatile disaffection of young people saddled with massive debt for tuition fees, and the discontent of public sector workers fearing for their future and we have divisive echoes of the times when Margaret Thatcher declared there was no society and Norman Tebbit suggested that the unemployed get on their bikes and look for work.